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✽ Hiraki Sawa: Lenticular A new film shot at the Mills Observatory in Dundee
forms the centrepiece of this Japanese video and animation artist’s first solo exhibition in Scotland. See review, page 110. Dundee Contemporary Arts, until Sun 5 Jan.
✽ Chris Johanson: Considering A selection of work by the self-taught, Los
Angeles-based artist that blurs the boundaries between high and low culture and is, he says, ‘half-California, half-Glasgow’. See preview, page 106. Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Fri 20 Dec.
✽ Ever / Present / Past Projects by Mark Dion and Claire Barclay marking the end of a year-long programme commemorating the bicentenary of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. See preview, page 108. Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 16 Nov–Sat 15 Feb.
✽ Louise Bourgeois: A Woman Without Secrets / I Give Everything
Away The French-American artist’s work appears in two major shows. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 18 May; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 23 Feb.
✽ Lucy Skaer The Turner Prize nominee makes a sort-of homecoming. See feature, page 24. Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 15 Dec.
✽ Once upon a time and a very good time it was See preview, left. Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 30 Nov–Sat 21 Dec.
✽ Roman Ondák: Some Thing For his third UK solo show, the Slovakian presents
a series of still lifes he painted as a teenager. The twist is that they are placed beside the original object the work was taken from. Common Guild, Glasgow, until Sat 14 Dec.
14 Nov–12 Dec 2013 THE LIST 103
ONCE UPON A TIME AND A VERY GOOD TIME IT WAS Ingleby group show makes connections across time and place
B orrowing its title from the first line of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this group show incorporates most of the Ingleby’s represented or associated artists. Offering a new spin to on-loan antiquities and classic pieces from Africa, China and Oceania are the likes of Ian Davenport, Peter Liversidge, Ian Hamilton Finlay and David Batchelor.
‘The title seemed like a good place to start for what will be a diverse, encyclopaedic sort of show,’ says the gallery’s owner, Richard Ingleby. ‘In tone and spirit it will be a little like the very beautiful Abstraction show we made ten years ago when the gallery was at Carlton Terrace, which was necessarily constricted by the available space.’ This time, the gallery area will allow for increased ambition of scale. ‘The idea is to make connections between objects across time and place, but not in a prescriptive or
literal way,’ says Ingleby. ‘For example, what links a tiny Anatolian idol from the 3rd century BC with a small painting by Sean Scully? Ostensibly nothing: one is figurative, one abstract; one is 4500 years old, one is new; one is made of stone, one is paint on canvas . . . and yet when you put them together, something chimes.’ Ingleby believes that both have a presence that confronts the viewer. ‘There’s a certainty in their own existence, and yet for all their apparent strength they each suggest a kind of unexpected intimacy. It will be a very subjective exhibition – what makes sense to one eye may bewilder another – but crucially, all the elements will be intriguing things worth looking at and thinking about.’ (David Pollock)
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 30 Nov– Sat 21 Dec.